This was a banner day.
It turns out Rudolph Gall-iani will literally say anything he thinks will get him elected, especially if it involves climbing on the corpses of 9/11 victims or the shoulders of those who cleaned up afterwards:
Speaking to reporters in Cincinnati, Giuliani said, "I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers... I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them."Do those workers agree with him?
Oh, he's tried to backtrack. So sad, so lame.Fire Captain and Giuliani foe James Riches, whose firefighter son died on 9/11:
"That's insulting and disgraceful. He's a liar. I was down there on my hands and knees looking for my son."Queens paramedic Marvin Bethea:
"I personally find that very, very insulting," he said..."Standing there doing a photo-op and telling the men, 'You're doing a good job,' I don't consider that to be working."Ironworker Jonathan Sferazo who spent a month at ground zero:
"He's not one of us. He never has been and he never will be. He never served in a capacity where he was a responder," Sferazo said.
An isolated incident of exaggeration? Not so, per Wayne Barrett in The Village Voice:
Rudy Giuliani's Five Big Lies About 9/11:Turns out he lies about the minimal, unsuccessful terrorism prosecutions he even touched when he was a U.S. Attorney.
1. 'I think the thing that distinguishes me on terrorism is, I have more experience dealing with it.'
2. 'I don't think there was anyplace in the country, including the federal government, that was as well prepared for that attack as New York City was in 2001.'No, turns out NYC was much worse than the Pentagon, no unified command, no high-rise plan, bad communications killed firefighters, lackadaisical response to 1993 WTC bombing.
3. Don't blame me for 7 WTC, Rudy says.(Do.)
4. 'Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us.'The worst kind of typical GOP scummy smearjob.
Clinton was the President who ordered daily briefings on Al Queda and other terrorist threats. Bush cut them down, missed "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States." 9/11 happened on Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld's watch. Then they blew our lead in Afghanistan by attacking Iraq, with Rudy's full and continued support. This after Rudy blew the preparations in NYC.
Meanwhile the Dems consider terrorists criminals rather than soldiers, meaning you don't do asymmetrical warfare and get your ass handed to you by an enemy you often can't see, who can disappear into a population...like a criminal.
Rudy understands...nothing.
5. 'Every effort was made by Mayor Giuliani and his staff to ensure the safety of all workers at Ground Zero.'Ask them.
Will this cave in on Rudy? Who the heck else do the GOP have to go with? McCain is polling below Obama amongst Iowa Republicans. Mitt's fundraiser are johns or crooks. In fact, "None of the Above" is leading the GOP field in Iowa:
None of the Above has polled higher than Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and all the other Republican presidential candidates, reflecting a lackluster field that isn’t catching on with the American people.
What else is there to loathe about the GOP?
- David Brooks reveals that no one likes the current President -- even Republicans.
- Bush and Giuliani want to regress our tax system further.
- They are traitors who leak secrets when politically advantageous for them.
- They will have to bring back the Draft.
Oh, and their President Cheney is desperately trying to plunge us into WWIII.
Prediction:
Newt Gingrich will enter the race, solely on the basis that he has the smarts, nerve and ego to run against the current President. He will wipe out at least two of the three supposed contenders now, maybe even go head-to-head with Rudy. Whichever one wins will not win the General Election, unless there is some act of violence which tips the equation.
Newt will, however, unleash a huge Republican rank & file rage against the current Administration, and he may be able to ride that wave to a nomination.
The trick will be to blame the officeholders and not the overall Republican ideology, but GOP faithful will want to be fooled into that, and are probably laying the groundwork already. Bifurcate the leadership away from Karl Rove. Scoop 'em up.
It's the only strategy that can take on and beat None of the Above.
2 comments:
You hit the nail on the head w/ Newtie. Clearly the emerging repub strategy is to paint GWB as a "rogue republican", "not really a reagan conservative", etc -- the usual crazy lone gunman baloney, when in fact what GWB & his admin actually represent is completely unfettered reagan conservatism. If they only had another 4 years in office, the US would be back on the gold standard, rebuilding debtors' prisons, and spraying everything w/ DDT.
Unfortunately for the current dwarves running fo the repub nomination, they've spent so much time barnacling themselves to bush's pro-war rhetoric that they can't separate themselves from the rest of his policies. Newtie might be able to.
It's important that the middle & left spend more time pounding on the complete failure of reaganite policies -- from rationale to conception to execution -- than they do pounding on Bush (sigh, such an easy target) because Bush isn't the problem, and the problem won't just disappear on Jan 20, 2009.
The problem is that reaganism is a sham and its policies destructive to all but .1% of the country. The next president is going to have to start educating the populace and rolling some of this garbage back (a la Teddy Roosevelt), not just celebrating the fact that s/he's not GWB.
I just think it's hard to sell negatives on Ronald Reagan to the larger American public.
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